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Storm Draugar
The Storm Draugar were a company of 100 Thunder Warriors during the Unifaction Wars on Holy Terra. As such they predate the Adeptus Astartes. Though the offical Imperial records state that the Thunder Warriors all died during the Unifcation Wars, in reality the Emporor had them eradicated by the Wars end due to thier lack of mental and moral satbility. In truth the Thunder Warriors were but tame killers, nothing more, nothing less. The Storm Draugars were no exeption, they cut a vast swath of carnage and bloodshed in the Emporors name during the Unification Wars though many of thier grand exploits have been lost to ledgend or covered up by the Emporor himself. The Thunder Warriors were nigh unstoppable super soilders, surpasing even the later Space Marines in the theater of war. The Storm Draugar were and elite company, known for thier sheer skill in hand to hand combat that surpased even their fellow Thunder Warriors. The Storm Draugar were also less suseptable to the degridation most Thunder Warriors suffered from, they seemed resistant to the usual cellular and mental decay that the others suffered from. This would prove to be both a blessing and a curse. The Unification Wars The Storm Draugar were created to fight prehaps one of the greatest wars humanity has ever known, the Unification Wars pitted various tyrants and warlords with their armies of feral super soilders and techno-barbarian hordes against the Emporor's nacent Imperium. The Thunder Warriors were the vangaurd of the now massive Imperium of Man. And the Storm Draugar, being considered masters in close quarters combat, were in some of the bloodyest and mind shattering battles to have ever been fought by mankind. They stood against barbarian hordes and mighty armies of feral gene-warriors. They and their fellow Thunder Warriors but they fought and died in the name of the Imperium, their numbers quickly relplenished by the use of proto-gene-seed and the Emporors will. Of these grand battles very few are known to the Imperium they were fought for but a few of the documents of these titanic struggles have survived. The Siege of Ballk The Siege of Ballk was a bloody affair, even moreso than many of the battles of the Unification wars, countless millions of the Emporors loyal subjects had died trying to take the ancient fortress city of Ballk which was ruled by the infamous Warlord of Ballk and his cartel of vicous crime lords. They had armies of deadly gene-warriors at thier disposal and their massive fortress (which spanned over a quarter of the area that had once been known in the most ancient of times as Greenland) was all but impregnable, its walls were hundreds of miles high and miles thick. The Emporor dedicated four whole companies of Thunder Warriors, including the Storm Draugar, to take the fortress city no matter the cost. After five failed charges in a vain attempt to force thier way through the heavily garuded walls the Storm Draugars came up with an ingenious plan. Rather than try to break the massive gates or blow a hole in the wall... the Storm Draugars would undermine the wall. Whilst their fellow Thunder Warriors kept throwing themselves at the gates, the Storm Draugars gathered leigons of workers (mostly prisoners of war) and forced them to dig a massive tunnle network right beinith the walls of Ballk. It was a massive undertaking and the laborers died of exhaustion in droves. The siege continued for months and months but one day, Imperial forces saw smoke riseing from within the cities walls. No sooner had this been noticed that the titanic gates of Ballk opened wide. From the ruins of Ballk the Storm Draugars marched, thier Company commander holding the head of the Warlord of Ballk in triumph. The Dethroning of Boris the Red Boris the Red was a powerful tyrant in control of the area once known by the ancients as Norway and Sweden, he had a mighty army of feral gene-warriors known as the Red Hand, their name was feared in the reagion and across the contenent as deadly hand-to-hand combatants and burtal raiders. All recent attempts to invade the tyrants territory by other warlords had ended in abject failure. The Emporor dispached the Storm Draugar to end Boris the Reds reign and destroy his infernal Red Hand warriors. The Storm Draugar attacked from the south and east, forcing the Red Hand back in battle after battle, skirmish after skirmish until it all came to a head at the very gates of the tyrants keep on the cost. There, in the open feilds, the Storm Draugar and the Red Hand met. The Red Hand numbered in the thousands, the Storm Draugar were only a hundred strong and had only a small auxilary of Imperial soilders. The Red Hand charged, their warcry filling the air, their primitive power armor shineing like daggers in the red sunlight... the Storm Draugar only stood in silence, weapons at the ready. The battle was over in mere minutes, the Red Hand lay slain to the last man, their tyrant lord reportedly threw himself from the hightest tower of his keep rather than face the Sorm Draugar. The Battle of the Tauris Planes Betrayal Towards the end of the Unification Wars the Storm Draugar had grown weary of the Imperium it had served for hundreds of years now, they began to be unerved by the sudden drop in recrutes the Company had been reciving. But they had no reaon to susupect that the days of the Thunder Warriors were drawing to a close,that the Emporors Space Marines would soon take thier place. The Storm Draugar were supposed to meet their end at the hands of a small Adeptus Custodes force, they were told their mission was to fininsh off a small band of techno-barbairian holdouts deep within the arctic tundra of the notheren circle. They did, however become suspicous when the Emporors own body gaurd showed up in mid transet, the leader of the Custodes group said that the barbarians in question had something of great intrest to the Emporor. The Storm Draugar beileved them, again, how could they have known that, even then as they boared thier dropships, the purges had begun all over the plaent. The Custodes and Storm Draugar arrived at their destination, but all was quiet...as the Storm Draugar took the front of the eerie advance the Custodes stayed behind them, the moved cautiously through a deep cave sysem within a glacier. It was when the Storm Draguar entered the main chamber, which held only the long dead corpses of thecno-barbarians, did the Storm Draugar realize what was about to happen. Before the Custodes could even move the Thunder Warriors whirled around to face them. The battle was over in seconds. The Storm Draugars had survived the ambush, but barely. Nearly half of thier number lay dead, or dieing of thier wounds. At first they aurgued over weather or not the Custodes were simply betraying the Emporor and trying to seize power for themselves, but it soon became obvious that that was not the case. From the communicators of the dead Custodes, they could hear the various other groups reporting thier succsess, they were being purged and it was the Emporor himself who had ordered it. The barbarians were strewn accross the caves in order to make it seem that the Storm Draugar had died fighting the enemies of the Imperium, rather than buchered in cold blood. With this grim realization the Storm Draugar turned to one thought, survival. They gathered up the dropships and covertly flew to the shuttle stations in the heart of the Imperal capital, the ships were being used to conduct various diplomatic missons to Mars. The Storm Draugar overtook the station and fled in the captured ships. They did not make it far and were forced to land on Mars. On Mars they were presued by the Mechanicum Skiitari and soon found themselves cornered at the base of Olympus Mons. It was there, on those red and barren foot hills, that the Storm Draugar made thier final stand against the Mechanicus forces. Many were consumed with wrath that they would die by the hands of a foe other than the Imperium they served so loyaly. Most belived that to have died in those caves on that firdged glacier would have been a kindess. Regardless of thier personal belifes they still stood, as the last of their kind. Proudly they stood, as the Skiitari hordes charged to meet them. They stood as they always did, weapons at the ready, totaly silent... on the day that the Storm Draugar died on the cold red sands of an alien world, the Emporor was said to have hung his head in greif, that this was the fate for those who had served him so well. But their deaths had not been in vain for the Imperium they had helped build would swell across the stars. It is on their graves the Imperium was built, it was on their bones the Primarchs rose to power, and it was their blood the Emporor slipped in when Horus reduced him to a living corpse. Legacy Though the exploits of the Storm Draugar were covered up on Terra, the Mechanicus kept extensive records on the whole battle between these Thunder Warriors and Skiitari, and though these records were sealed and kept sercet for millenia. These records and massive stores of battle data and observations on the Storm Draugar were stolen by the traitor Mechanicus during the Great Scisem, and eventually found their way into the hands of a young Heretek. The Storm Draugaur would later inspire that Heretek to create an elite force of mechanical marines, which were programmed with the Storm Draugaurs combat data and combat doctrine, and were essentally the Storm Draugar reborn. (Though some debate the logic of this manuver, as Thunder Warrior combat doctrine is rather the same as most contemporary space marine chapters) In many ways the souless war machines (named the Draugar in honor of the warriors that inspred their creation) represent the very reasons the Emporor ordered the Thunder Warriors destruction. They are ment to destory, no more no less, they are ruthless killers knowing nither pity or mercy, they only know their orders and follow them... to any end.